Short Pump man grows state-champion pumpkin in his backyard

A backyard in Short Pump turned out to be the perfect spot for the new Virginia state champion pumpkin to grow.

Dustin Price’s giant pumpkin, sitting at 1,845 pounds, was certified at the Tennessee Valley Fair Sept. 7.

“I am the official state champion,” Price said. “Most of the weigh-offs, including the State Fair of Virginia, are here in the next [week or so], I’m crossing my fingers that nobody beats my record. But, I beat [the former Virginia state record] by 300 pounds, so I feel pretty good.”

For Price, 41, it was the culmination of an effort to grow giant fruit that started in 2007.

“He went to the Virginia State Fair…and he saw the giant pumpkins there and he got the bug for it,” said his father, Jerry Price.

Off and on for the past 15 years, Dustin Price has grown giant fruit in his yard, always hoping that one would be large enough for competition, he said.

“When I first tried it, I think we got like a 50-pound pumpkin,” Price said. “We pretty much failed miserably, but I worked hard the next year and that was the first year I got something big enough for the fair – it was 796 pounds.”

The seeds used to grow giant pumpkins aren't found at local hardware stores. According to Price, those in the giant pumpkin community commonly share seeds of award-winning pumpkins with one another.

Through bigpumpkins.com, Dustin Price found Ian Paton, an English man trying to grow a 3,000-pound pumpkin. Last year, Paton grew a pumpkin that weighed 2,907 pounds. It would have set a new world record but was disqualified because it started to rot.

According to the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, the governing body for international weigh-offs of giant fruits, rot anywhere on the pumpkin plant is grounds for disqualification.

Despite not becoming the world champion, the seeds of Paton's pumpkin were highly sought after.

“I contacted him and asked for a seed,” Price said. “It was kind of a shot in the dark, but he said ‘sure’ and sent me a seed. I figured I’ve been growing a bunch of gourds, but I got the seeds for the biggest pumpkin ever – I’ve got to try it.”

The typical giant pumpkin-grower has acreage in the country and can grow multiple pumpkins at one time, Price said. But because he lives in Short Pump on only about half an acre, he has room for only one plant, he said.

“I’ve had years where something happens, or years where it splits, when you can't try it again because it takes all year to grow,” Price said.

Justin Price said he, too, was impressed his son could grow a pumpkin that big with the small amount of land he used.

“Most of the people there live in the country and they have a lot of land and even more plants going so if one gets into trouble, they can always switch their efforts to another line,” Justin Price said. “But Dustin does this in his suburban backyard, so it’s pretty fun.”

The plant itself takes about three months to grow. From there, it needs another three months to produce the pumpkin, Dustin Price said.

“I knew it was a winner on about day 30,” he said. “I keep records of all the pumpkins I’ve grown in the past, I have their measurements on day 20, day 30…. [This year’s pumpkin] was way ahead of anything I’ve ever grown, so I knew it had to be something massive.”

While happy, Price also worried that the rapid growth would cause the pumpkin to split, which is grounds for disqualification in an official weigh-off.

“I would go out there every day, and it was just doing massive weight gains. I just was hoping that it wouldn’t split, and it never did,” he said.

Price originally wanted to take his pumpkin to the official weigh-off at the Virginia State Fair, but because it stopped growing three weeks before the event, he had to find an alternative.

“I knew based on the measurements it was going to be the state record,” Price told the Citizen. “My fear was that it was going to sit in my backyard and rot before I could get to the fair and get officially weighed.”

He found that the Tennessee Valley Fair in Knoxville holds an annual Giant Pumpkin Commonwealth weigh-off on Sept. 7, so he and his father, Jerry, drove almost seven hours to the fair with the pumpkin in a U-Haul.